An Answer to a Time Mag Article

For many it had to be disappointing that you did not include discussion of the single greatest human cause of environmental damage nor any practical programs for mitigating that cause, in your "10 Ideas That Are Changing The World" list. Are we as a _species_ in denial? I would like to see a whole story on this issue alone, but will understand if you choose not to... My anecdotal studies suggest no one would buy your magazine to read it. Talk about, "An Inconvenient Truth"! No one wants to hear about this one, or even let it stray into their mind for long. The "many" being disappointed were surely the non-humans on the planet. For an estimated 27,000 plant and animal species a year, there comes a moment when only one of them is left alive and struggling with all they have to keep their species going...only to fail.

The resources their species' needed are no longer available. Land use changes, loss of habitat, hunting, pollution, etc. have wiped them off the Earth forever. This extinction rate is estimated at several _thousand_ times the natural rate. What is driving it? Humans. One of your ideas claims that the planet has a carrying capacity of some 8 billion and we will stabilize at it, but how can that be when species are being wiped out like this? How many years can we lose 27,000 species before those pesky chickens come home to roost? Seems like if we take our cue from Nature herself, we can find our true carrying capacity by when extinction is occurring at the natural rate.

Global human population management is the mother of all inconvenient truths. We have a niche in the biosphere to fill and we do not decide its size, Nature herself does. We can willfully manage our own population or Nature will do it for us with environmental collapse (global warming merely being one of many on the list), poverty and famine, disease, and war. It's not how big our carbon footprint is, but rather the consumption and waste footprint and HOW MANY OF US are making footprints.

There are three ways to manage it. Voluntary measures exist and they can turn the environmental direction around 180 degrees in ONE DECADE! Wow, get a reporter on this. (But be warned, no one will want to read the article, not even Al Gore.) Non-voluntary but democratic governmental ways exist such as the removal of tax incentives for having children, and the creation of tax-disincentives. And of course there is education. People need to learn early on the basics of ecology and carrying capacity, interdepence, respect for all life, consumption and waste footprint (forget carbon footprint), living within the means of the given ecosystem, NON-EXPLOITIVE low-consumption/high-tech lifestyles and societies, etc.

There's an impoverished and extremely non-popular website that represents at least one voluntary approach. The idea is simple: The global and self-identifying "Haves" voluntarily sacrifice some of their money, goods, and services. The global and self-identifying "Have-nots" voluntarily sacrifice some of their fertility. There is a global redistribution of wealth and globally human population levels move down into their carrying capacity through natural attrition. The website has an online interactive spreadsheet that details the program cost and some basic program variables. Dramatic global affects can be theoretic ally seen with ten countries funding $150B/year for ten years. Affordable when compared to the Iraq war. Part of the novelty of this approach is that not only is free birth control provided, but also incentive payments to participants and their communities. Keep in mind that for some 60% of the world, the annual income is less than $1,500 USD. For example, as seen in the spreadsheet, a village of 1,000 could realize program benefits of $600,000 to $800,000+ in cash, goods, and services: food, agriculture, medicine, clean water, transportation, communication, housing, education, generators, tools, clothing, neonatal care, etc. They exchange hope for the future (their fertility) for Hope Now. (See website: www.prvllc.org.)

Both sides of the global human equation sacrificing, united together for fixing that part of the world's problems which we are empowered to fix. Caring for each other by sacrificing our greed, selfishness, and self-importance in recognition that if we choose not to we have no future and will take a lot more of other amazing species with us. Coming to our senses and accepting our place in Nature. What would Jesus do? Exactly that. Maybe he gave us the answer to a pop-quiz that was to come 2,000 years later: self-sacrifice.